


I Lost a World the Other Day

by allfireburns



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Gen, Memories, POV Third Person, Trust, community: justprompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:56:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allfireburns/pseuds/allfireburns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone else in this universe needs to think of Gallifrey as real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Lost a World the Other Day

It's strange - even as he starts talking, he finds it strange - that all she has to do is ask, and look at him with those dark eyes full of question and expectation and sadness, hurting for him though she can't possibly know how it feels, and it all comes tumbling out.

Maybe it's only that no one else has asked, or that he's been keeping it in for far too long, or that he wants one other person in this universe to know what it was, what it meant, how it ended. To everyone else, everyone in this whole universe who's ever heard of it, Gallifrey is nothing more than a legend, a myth, a fairy tale. There has to be someone who thinks of it as real.

He's not telling her everything. Descriptions of mountains and trees and sky, sun and wind and rain, they don't actually mean that much. He knows it's all taken on a softer edge in his mind, now that it's gone, that nostalgia lends fondness and longing he'd never felt when Gallifrey still shone in the heavens. He knows nothing he can say will make her really understand, the love and hate and familiarity and contempt he'd felt for that old world, and how it feels now that it's gone.

But it's enough, and when he finally can't find anything more to say, and Martha gets to her feet and offers her hand to him, he feels like he's been lifted of at least a fraction of some burden when he takes her hand. They walk together back to the TARDIS through the grimy streets and alleys of Pharmacy Town, splashing through the leftover rain puddles every now and then.


End file.
